


Hark the Harold Angels Sing

by Withstarryeyes



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Eve, Christmas Special, Drowning, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Gift Giving, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Parental Riza Hawkeye, Parental Roy Mustang, happiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 14:11:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17143226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Withstarryeyes/pseuds/Withstarryeyes
Summary: Ed winds up in the hospital on Christmas Eve after drowning. Maes makes it a special time for the military family we all know and love.





	Hark the Harold Angels Sing

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Holidays everybody! I just wanted to write something for Fullmetal and it became this. I hope you like it and that all of you guys have a wonderful Christmas or whatever you celebrate.

He's’ washed out, tumbling. There’s only white in his vision and Ed looks skyward, realizing slowly that he isn’t quite sure where that is. His fingers are almost touching the sand there and it’s only a few more moments that he notices he’s looking downward. Skyward has waves and bubbles and this immense distance to the icy top. His road coat is floating and tugging him in the direction of the light current, he plants his feet on the bottom and uses the weight of his limbs to steady him as he inches out of it. He doesn’t have enough air to reach the top, he knows this as the startling squeal of need compresses his chest and scrapes against his ribcage like a dagger. 

He lets out a breath, seeing the bubbles rise to the top and stops, arm still in one side of the coat as fear shocks through him. Fear that his brother will see those and think he’s dead already. He’s going to die, he knows, but he doesn’t want Al to have any premature guilt or dread, or sorrow. His fingers are going numb once he regains his composure and sheds his coat. He wiggles them, almost bursting out laughing at how they’re still coated in his white gloves. They’re sticking to his skin, translucent, and he can see the shiny gleam of his arm. He sheds those too if only to pretend he has more mobility and lets out some more air, trying to release the pressure of his lungs like a shaken champagne bottle. 

It doesn’t help, much, but it does add a pleasant wave of dizziness and cloudiness over his body, erupting in goosebumps and strobe-light vision. He wonders, belatedly, if he can transmute anything, but he’s weak already and his automail can’t get any lighter. He’d leave it at the bottom but even then he doesn’t have enough time to get to the top, and then he’s just lost Winry so many dollars inexpensive materials. 

Instead, Ed sits, on the sandy bottom, and closes his eyes, feeling his braid bloom behind him in a smoke-like cloud. It’s Christmas Eve, and it’s cold in this water, he thinks the cold might take him before the suffocation, but he’s not sure. He’s been down for maybe a minute, possibly two, and he’s fading fast. He wonders if he’ll get a flashback of his life if he’ll relive all the memories. He hopes he doesn’t, that sounds like more of a hell than death and more of a hell that he’s probably going. He hopes he just… drifts, or that he gets to see his mom, alive. He doesn’t remember what she used to smell like but he remembers her soft hair and her button-smeared apron and the look of love in her eyes. Will his brain fill in the rest? Or will he always have a misshapen, malformed impression of her?

The blackness is encroaching, even with his eyes closed, he can feel it, building like his pressure-cooker lungs. He has to breathe in, voluntary apnea. It’s natural, and he can’t fight it. Turns out the suffocation wins. Ed opens his eyes to catch a final glimpse of the area around him, to turn his eyes skyward, catch the few blurry shadows he can and pretend they’re Mustang and Riza, Hughes and Al. God, he hopes Al didn’t have to watch. And only after he searches the lake for them, through the opaque ice, does he let the water in. It’s not an instantaneous loss of consciousness, unfortunately, and he jerks a few times, panicked, trying to draw oxygen out of the air, until it’s useless and the darkness fills everything, and he feels arms grab him around his waist. Apples and sugar, his mother smells like apples and sugar. He feels her breath against his cheek, and then a fizzled out explosion and it’s all gone in a tidal wave of warmth. 

* * *

Ed’s a dead weight in his arms, cold and limp and hanging. Roy’s never seen him this pale before, not breathing, not moving, not pink with fury. He crests the water hacking, shivering, and Rize pulls them both on to the boat, handing her coat off to Roy and taking Ed to slip him on to the bottom. He’s blue, and his eyes are closed, blessedly. She hates having to stare into them, lifeless, when she performs CPR. She can do it, regardless, but she vastly prefers pretending they’re just unconscious, especially when they’re kids like Ed, especially Ed. She’s concerned for Roy, there’s a good chance he’ll get hypothermia, and she’s not too sure he kept himself from sucking in a breath at the cold water. She’ll mother-hen him later, and he knows this, catching her eyes with his own and shaking his head. Ed, first, the movement says.

She’s way ahead of him. Ed’s already lost his overcoat, and Roy took off his automail before hoisting him up, but he’s white shirt is clinging to him. She tears that down the middle and settles herself above him, placing her hands over his sternum and starting compressions. She’s praying it works, but she’s seen so many people drown, and so many of them come back only to die of pneumonia a week later. She shucks that thought off her mind in favor of counting, breathing for him, and stopping to feel for a pulse. 

“Do you think he’ll make it?” Roy croaks. Riza allows her gaze to flicker to him. He looks beat, and pale, cold, but fine otherwise. His shivering has gone down a little, not stopped in a worrying way, but he’s not sloshing the boat anymore. Al’s still on the shore, too heavy for the boat, and left there while they chased Scar across the water. Ed had leaped on his boat when they’d gotten close, and slipped off the edge when Scar had turned too quickly for him to keep his balance. Roy had dived in after him and Riza had taken a few shots at him, before winding the boat into a better position to lift him up. 

“He’ll make it,” she says, after what feels like forever and Roy nods once, too defeated to fight it with cynicism. 

“Do you want me to take over?” She raises a thin, blonde brow and Roy smirks, knowing that would be the reply. He’s too weak for it anyway, but he’s stubborn and hearty and that’s (practically) his kid,  _ their kid, _ under her hands. 

She stops compressions and feels under Ed’s chin for a pulse. “Steer the boat back to shore when you can.”

They need to get Ed to the hospital. Hypothermic drowning isn’t included under the military's first aid but Riza wanted to be a nurse long before a soldier and she knows Ed might not get a pulse before he’s warmed up. They’re fresh out of blankets, here, and Riza’s arms are starting to tire. 

The boat rocks dangerously when Roy stands and starts the boat, letting it rumble under Riza’s knees for a moment before starting to move. The shore looks so far away and Ed looks so small under her. He’s only 14, barely a teenager. She doesn’t remember what she was doing when she was that young, maybe sewing dresses, or reading old medical texts. Whatever it was, she was naive in doing it. Ed had never been naive, not under them, and she can’t imagine how it felt for him to suffocate down there. 

She wonders if he was scared, and after thinking of the implications, hopes he was if only to prove he still had some of his childhood left. 

* * *

Consciousness laps at him, slowly, like water soaking into a sponge. He’s cold and shaking. He can feel before anything else and he feels light, cold in the places where his automail usually is. His joints are sore and his chest aches, his throat tickles and he jostles to his side, coughing, water running out of his mouth and dribbling onto the cot he’s on. There are warm hands branding his back, keeping him on his side, and a pinch in his hand.

He opens his eyes, and the only thing he can see is an overexposed blob of a person. Shiny, metal. He drags his eyes back open after they close, and it clears a little. It’s Al, eyes almost weepy. He wonders who is behind him, but the thought flies away in a second. He’s scrabbling for purchase in the world, trying to grab onto feelings, and noises and sights. He can see Al, he can feel hands, he’s shivering, he’s coughing, he’s spinning, and then he’s gone.

* * *

 

They make it to the hospital, lord knows how. Roy’s a destroyed mess in the back, finding enough of his strength to take over Riza’s job. She’s driving like a maniac, swerving in the street, pressing the gas pedal faster than it should ever be pressed. And Al is rattling. Roy thinks if he had a human form he’d be in shock, or wailing, but all Roy can hear is a tin can shaking and little puffs of noise that vaguely sound like sobs. When they finally pull up, Roy’s back to having numb hands and he can’t catch his breath. 

Ed’s taken away from them so fast, and only then does Riza bow her head and cry. Roy’s only seen Riza cry a few times, and one of them was after Hughes told her how close Mustang had gotten to ending it all. He pulls her into his arms, forgetting their uniforms and titles to just remain as Roy and Riza, and Al huddled up next to them. 

“Colonel Mustang?” The voice is soft, and the parts to look at her, straightening back up into his imposing form. “Sir, we’d like to look you over too.”

“You’ll release me once Fullmetal’s been looked after,” he commands, and the nurse doesn’t even try to correct him. She’s met too many officers to think she can overcome their stubbornness. 

“Of course, sir, now how long were you in the water?” He waves one last time to Riza and Al, watching them find their spots in the waiting room, before answering and ducking back into the curtained off areas.

* * *

 

The second time Ed wakes up, he’s more coherent. That first time had been just a few minutes after they’d finally gotten his pulse back, and he’d crawled his way awake in a way they’d never seen before. Roy hadn’t even been cleared yet, and only Al had been let through to comfort him. They’d sedated him soon after and that’s when Ed had been sent back into blackness. 

But now Roy and Al and Riza are all here, and he feels small, sore, and dumb. He has an oxygen mask on, and his hair is loose around his shoulders. He smells like saltwater. 

“Want some ice, Ed?” Riza asks. His throat is still sore so he just nods and glares at Mustang on his left side. He’s smirking. 

“What do you want?” he mutters at Mustang. Al jolts, rattling again. He’s been rattling the whole time Ed’s been awake. 

“Nothing, just that we told you not to try to get onto Scar’s boat.”

“He was getting away.” The banter felt more natural to Ed and Mustang, more natural than concern and feelings and tears. He’d died, he knew that and Roy had saved him, he knew that too. 

He wasn’t stupid, but he was scared. And scrabbling back into practice was easier than facing everything he now knew. Easier than facing the fact that he’d seen his mom again, and it had hurt more than it had helped. He needed to find the philosopher’s stone more than ever now. 

“Shush, Roy, you’re just grumpy because the nurse made you sit for an IV.”

“It was unnecessary.”

Riza smirks and stays quiet. It’s nice, seeing Ed better and Roy better and having them both yell at each other together. She wasn’t sure either of them would make it, but she’d been pulled out of the waiting room for Roy’s clean bill of health and Ed’s signs of doing better. They were fairly certain he’d make a full recovery. 

“Oh no, Mom and Dad are fighting on Christmas,” Hughes’ voice drifts in from the doorway. He’s dressed in a Santa costume and has a plump sac on his back. Roy and Riza both glare but they stay silent when it sends Ed into laughter, rubbing his back when that dissolves into wet sounding coughs. 

“Maes?”

“Hey kiddo, hope you don’t mind, me and Elicia brought some presents. She didn’t want Uncle Ed to miss Santa since you’re in the hospital and he won’t be able to find you.”

Elicia squeals and juts through Maes’ legs to climb onto Ed’s bed, ramming into his chest. He coughs, sealing his arms around her. “Why’s your hair all down? Do you want me to braid it? Mamma said I’m too young to do my own but I can do yours.”

Ed smiles and lets his blonde hair fly down to frame his face. “Sure, Elicia! That sounds great.”

Her arms wave in excitement and she lets out a shrill giggle before climbing up Ed’s front to slide down his back and grab at his hair. Maes winces and shoots Ed an apologetic look.

“So,  _ Santa _ , what did you bring me? Money?”

“No, Ed. You gotta open them to see.”

Ed wants to deny doing it. It’s childish and his chest hurts and he kinda wants to take a nap. But Elicia is still doing his hair and he knows if he stopped it she will start crying because he will miss out on Christmas. Besides, he is curious. 

There are only two presents for him, the other three are gifts for Mustang, Hawkeye, and Al, and he grabs the biggest one first. It is soft under his hands and puckers where his hands hit it. It has to have been wrapped by Gracia because it is beautiful in navy blue paper with silver snowflakes and a delicate red bow. He slips the bow off and tears the paper, holding up the garment to see it properly, 

It is a new red overcoat, with onyx buttons, and embroidered patterns. It has to be handmade, he can tell, and he can’t imagine how long Gracia had spent on it. “Thanks, Maes,” he says and hugs him, letting the coat fall onto his lap. 

“Of course, Ed. You know you’re family. Now unwrap the other one.”

He does, it is a chocolate orange and it feels small in his hand. He loves these, his mother used to put them in Al and his stocking when they were young. He pops one of the pieces into his mouth and hands one to Elicia who has abandoned her quest to fix his hair for grabbing at his gifts, smoothing her hands over his jacket. 

“I haven’t had one of these in years.”

“Me either,” Al chirps, holding his own in his hands. They could be ornaments, too, if uneaten and Al was planning to put it on their tree. 

It has been years since Ed or Al have had a traditional Christmas, and while being in the hospital is far from Ed’s choice he can’t claim he’s mad. He likes having Colonel Bastard and Hawkeye there. He likes not having to pretend to sleep while Al moves around during the night and he likes having Elicia joke with him and try to do his air. It’s as merry of a Christmas as he’s had since joining the military. It’s perfect. 

“Merry Christmas,” he says, letting Elicia climb into his lap and pull a couple more orange slices out of the package. 

“Merry Christmas, Ed.”

Everyone stays the night and in the morning the nurses bring in a Christmas tree and hand out gifts from the gift shop, smiling at the family in that room, happier than most she’s seen all day. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I hoped you guys liked this! I had fun writing it. If you did like it please leave a kudos or a comment, they really make my day. Happy Holidays :)
> 
> \- C


End file.
